Exploding shells rattled my legs, my ribs, and my teeth. Reaching a hand to my ears, I felt warm blood. Warmth—warmth. I still had feeling left.
“Luther,” I croaked, “Luther.”
He was a motionless lump, rolled over on his belly, pressed right up against me. Oh God. Was he—?
I have no idea how long I laid there, the world flashing white and black with shell bursts, but I only managed to discern three thoughts from the jumble.
Appleby was standing right in front of the guns when the shell hit so there’s no way he survived. If Appleby is dead, then the others probably are too. That means we are alone, and nobody is coming to rescue us.
Each thought took eons to take shape. I grappled for more, but everything slipped away in the fluctuating darkness and blinding white. I struggled to breathe. My voice was all but gone; pain came out in wheezes of spittle through gritted teeth. Each drop of rain or snow or falling debris burned.
“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”
“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”
“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”
The rest of the prayer escaped me, and my brain prompted me to repeat the words on its own accord. Luther’s face was hidden—his body dark and unmoving. And he had not written the letter to his mother.
“Forgive me, Constance Baker, full of grace; blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.”
The night flashed white with manufactured light as a flare rose into the sky like the Star of Bethlehem. A rising plume of dirt flew over us, and through some force of will I don’t understand, I grabbed Luther’s arm and dragged him with me as I rolled into the crater that had opened up behind me. The dirt settled back to the ground, half-burying us in our graves like a heavy blanket to block out the stinging air. To rest. I was a boy, cozy under blankets on Christmas Eve. I recalled Christmas Eve service, at midnight as Father Carmichael paced at the front of the church in his vestments. The church walls, the ribbed and cavernous belly of a whale, swallowed me up like the tales of old. The walls rose to the cloudy blanket in the pale hours of the coming day, crisscrossed with smoke trails from rockets and aeroplanes and mortars. I closed my eyes again, ready for a long, long rest.
Something moved and my eyes once again struggled open. Luther. He rolled over and sat up, cradling his head. He looked at his hands and his side, finding no wounds, and then caught sight of me. Barely breathing, I eyed him from beneath cracked lids.
“Rodney Stoker?” he mouthed. “You are hurt.”
He leaned in closer. When I didn’t react, he waved a hand in my face. Then, he kissed my forehead. With cupped hands, he removed the dirt from my still-breathing corpse, then stripped off his coat and laid it over me.
The white eye of noon hung in the now clear sky. Shells flashed in the distance. Every time a bomb sounded, Luther convulsed, pressed his hands against his ears and rocked back and forth. I watched him do that for hours as I slipped in and out of the dark. Finally, a lull in the fighting came. Luther struggled to his knees and then to his feet, poking his head out in the clear daylight, glancing over to where our boys sat in the pillboxes. Then he turned and looked back at the Germans. Back and forth he looked, his head ticking and tocking like a metronome. Then he decided to make a run for it, and started to scramble up the side of the crater.
“Stay,” I wheezed, my voice like two scraping stones. I threw my arm out to grab Luther’s ankle, the pain of movement slicing through me like a bayonet’s blade.
“Wait for dark … they’ll see.” I knew his nerves were screaming at him to run for the trench, but he stopped and looked down at me. “Stay. Stay for your mum,” I said. “Write that letter. In my pocket.”
“I don’t know my letters!”
“I know. I’m going to help, remember? Help me get the paper and pencil.”
He slid down beside me and, gently, reached into my trouser pocket and pulled out the stationery and pencil.
“You’re hurt, Rodney Stoker.”
“Nothing we can do about it right now.”
With difficulty, he helped me to a sitting position, slipping the pencil and paper in my trembling hand.
“Pretend she’s here. What do you want to tell her?”
“Tell her I’m scared, Rodney Stoker. Tell her I don’t know where I am or what’s happening to the world. Tell her the people don’t want to kill each other, but they don’t know how to stop. Why do they only love things that aren’t real? Rules aren’t real. Countries aren’t real. People, people are real! Catch people when they fall! Hug people when they’re sad! Laugh with people when they’re happy! Is that so hard?”
I gritted my teeth as I tried bringing the pencil to the paper. For every word Luther said, I made sure to scribble something. My hand was trembling too much to write anything legible, but Luther didn’t know that. So long as he kept talking, here, away from the crater’s lip, I kept scribbling. A shell fell nearby, and the Earth shook, and he slammed his palms to his ears, shrieking and weeping and rocking, nose running, eyes red.
My voice was barely more than a raspy croak, but I tried to comfort him, to keep him from leaving our crater. “Keep talking. Think of your mum, now. Your mum.”
He shouted fragments of words between infantile sobs, and I kept scribbling, pinning the stationery against my knee for a writing surface.
Another bomb, closer this time, knocked Luther on his back. He righted himself, plunged his hands into the mud, and pulled out two clumps. Tearing off chunks of it, his hands worked hard, spinning, rolling, flattening between his palms, churning out little marbles, little truffles that he laid in rows on the ground. Sobs punctuated his sentences, and he shouted staccato phrases that undulated in his throat and burst out his mouth like a sing-song lamentation.
“Tell her Rodney Stoker is afraid of me because I don’t follow the rules. Tell her to stop following the rules that make her afraid. Tell her everyone is afraid of each other and they cry and point guns and think they are always right about everything. People who are big have big ideas that are too big to fit. Tell her everyone is afraid of themselves because they don’t know who they are.”
Luther wiped his nose.
“Tell her sometimes it’s not so hard to stop being afraid; all you have to do is be smaller and quieter than scary things so they can’t find you. Tell her it is good to live, to be happy and sad with people who work together and take care of each other, and they don’t know it because they are not small and quiet enough and are always yelling the loudest because they think it makes them right, but they don’t even hear their own words. Tell them all to be quiet inside and to listen so they don’t have to be afraid.”
For every bomb that fell that day, every cracking of the Earth itself, I flinched and waited for the end while Luther wept and rocked and made mud truffles. Appleby once told me that each time you’re near an explosion, a little part of your brain rattles out of place and sort of drowns in fear. During heavy shelling, you have to keep your cool, or else your whole brain will drown in its own fear. He was right. I could feel the little parts of my brain screaming at me to run and hide, for to stay was certain death, but to run back to the trench was an even more certain death. And besides, I could no more run than I could be crowned king of the British Empire. Fear wrung me out. Adrenaline ran dry, and darkness seeped into the edge of my vision. My legs went stiff, and I dropped the pencil and couldn’t bend my arms to pick it up. They paper fluttered away and the whole world was muted, a silent film, as Luther Baker and I waited for the end and everything spun and shattered around us.
I checked my watch. At this rate, I’d make it to Luther by the next morning. I slipped out the door and hopped off the train where my boots sank into an inch of mud. There was no shortage of mud in France; in fact the whole train yard was a frosted, churned-up mud pit. My fingers numbed in the freezer-burned air. I turned back and faced the train, not sure if I was supposed to hang back and help Private Roberts unload the post or not. Eeh. It’s his job, I’ll just leave him to it.
I pulled my boots out of the muck and suction-cupped my way across the muddy expanse, over to the cluster of buildings and the shed full of lorries. Guessed right—it was the post office. I told them my name and turned in my papers, and they held up their monocles to squint at them, and told me to come back at noon. Sure thing. Outside the post office and the warehouses and the depots, I found a dirt road that led into the nearby village of Hazebrouck. Maybe I could find a cafe there or something.
As I walked, I felt the ground rumble. I looked up, thinking a bomb was coming for me, but a few seconds passed, and nobody else panicked. I supposed it must be normal, this close to the fighting. On the horizon, I could see a grey smudge of smoke. That must be the front.
The town smelled of manure. It was a small cluster of homes and telegraph poles and shops rising out of a turnip field patchwork. Each home had a Christmas wreath on the door and smoke chugging out the chimney. I passed a group of children playing soccer with, of all people, a British soldier, and I wondered what would happen to the Moreau sisters. From the shop windows, a group of women looked on, arms crossed. An old lady was walking on the street near me, and I gave her a wide smile.
Around the corner, I chanced upon an open café with a nice courtyard where soldiers reclined at tables.
“Beer,” I said, slapping a few coins down on the counter. I was apprehensive that the barkeeper would not understand English.
“Not enough. You want beer, you pay more.” He held out his palm. “Only place for miles you can buy.”
“Keep your beer, then,” I shrugged. “Don’t want to bargain with you. You got water?”
The bartender glared but poured me a short glass of water and slammed it down on the counter. I walked over to an empty table, listening as the other patrons talked about their days.
“The hospital is plenty busy; they’ve been shelling since last night.”
“So much for Christmas cheer.”
“Mother Brand is leading it, which I guess is nice. She tends to keep people from losing their heads.”
“That Ethyl sure is something, isn't she?”
What? I turned to see four men in dirty white coats—doctors, I presumed—smoking around a table. “Excuse me,” I piped up, “did you say Ethyl Brand?”
One of them nodded, jetting out a ribbon of smoke and steam in the crisp air. “She works up in the hospital. Red Cross. Not here now, of course. She’s gone down to the front to treat a poor bloke from the Royal Warwickshires. Hit by a shell.”
“You called her Mother Brand, though,” I said. “Is she a nun now?”
“Why, do you know her?”
“Grew up with her.”
The doctor raised his eyebrows. “She’s a mystery. Some days I think she’s a nun, other days I think she’s an atheist. Came here from Boulogne with the Carmelites. There’s a convent a few miles out,” he pointed. “They house whoever they have room for—nurses, beggars, and the like.”
I nodded. Maybe I’d pay Ethyl a visit before I—well, it goes without saying.
I stared at the floor, and my breathing slowed. I was empty inside, resigned and unsure and terrified all at once. No matter. I’d made it this far and I had to keep focused on the goal. Instinctively I patted my bag where Luther’s ticket to Algeria was stowed. After I made sure he was on his way, well, who knew what would happen after that. I rose from the table and stepped outside. My shadow stretched across the street in the red evening sky. Back to the post office I marched, my reserve wobbling.
“You alright?” a baby-faced officer called.
“Hmm,” I nodded at him.
The lieutenant kept walking, and I paid him no mind until I heard him call out, “Hey, you! Girls! What are you doing?”
I turned and saw three little girls shrinking away from the officer’s commanding voice. I stopped in my tracks. The girls from the train!
“Say, what are you doing here?” the officer approached them. “This is no place for little girls alone. Where are your parents?”
Celeste reached for her skirts, where I knew she kept her knife. She’d use it if he got too close, Of that, I had no doubt. But the consequences for pulling a weapon on an officer? They’d lock her away for sure. And then what would happen to the little ones?
“Excuse me, young lady,” the lieutenant increased his pace, straggling after the three girls.
Pacing up behind the man, I grabbed him by the arm and. “Don’t worry about these ragamuffins,” I said. “I can take them to where they’re supposed to be.”
He looked me up and down with disdain. “How dare you grab me like that! Get your hand off me.”
I let go and stepped back.
“Do you know these girls?” he asked.
“I am acquainted with them and know where they live. I’ll see they get out of your way.” Before he could protest, I ushered the girls down the street and around the corner. When we were finally a few blocks away, I pushed them all into a little café and sat them down at a table in the darkest corner. Already, the whispers of Pére Noël sprang up.
“Let’s quiet down about that, alright?” I said. “You want that officer sending the authorities after you? Sending you off to who knows where?”
Celeste looked at her two sisters and shook her head.
“Right. So it looks like you’ll need to lay low for a few hours. Are you hungry?”
Hungry appeared to be a word all three girls knew for they all three leaned forward as if I’d already laid out a buffet dinner.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll buy you some food.”
I asked the bartender what food they had, and he just said, “Soup.” I fished out a few coins and carried back a small loaf of bread and three bowls of pink broth swimming with boiled beets. It was more water than soup, but the girls slurped it down in no time at all. I took the empty bowls up and paid for a refill.
“Where did you come from?” I asked Celeste. “Where are your parents?”
“We come from Lorraine,” Celeste began. “Soldiers come in the fall. They say they not hurt us, but when it was cold and we looked forward to Christmas, then our town burned down, and we knew the truth. I think they must hate Christmas. Ils dètestent noël.”
She rattled off a few sentences in French, like she was translating our conversation for her sisters, then continued.
“After the fire, we left. There were many of us at first, and we walked through farms and villages. People called us rèfugièes. One farmer gave us shoes when ours wore out. When it got too cold, a man gave us blankets.” She gestured wrapping a blanket about herself. “Nuns took some of us away, but not all. We told them we had un oncle, old man, who lives in the North. It’s our only family. So they put us on train and we go across France to find him. We come long way. But now it is Christmas, and you find us. You give us presents. You are our Pére Noël. You will take us to uncle at North Pole.”
She nodded to her sisters, and they looked up at me with wide eyes as if I was St. Nick himself. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I about wept.
It wasn’t so much the suffering that struck me—I had seen suffering before. But these little girls didn’t even know the meaning of war. They’d been so traumatized they’d gone searching for a folk tale. Santa Claus, for God’s sake! Santa Claus would give them presents. Santa Claus would take care of them. Santa Claus would take them to their uncle, the only family they had left. Jesus. To hell with Europe. To hell with this war. All this death and destruction for the whims of a handful of incestuous Kings, Kaisers, Czars, whatever damn titles they could make up for themselves. Cowards all. None of them were on the front lines, putting their own bodies in danger. Every damn one of them would probably flee if the enemy was at their gates, burning down their towns.
“You want me to take you to the North Pole? To find your uncle?” I repeated, swallowing hard.
Celeste nodded.
“You sure your uncle lives there?”
“Does your North Pole happen to be in the French countryside?” I asked.
“Oui monsieur.”
Celeste shoved a letter toward me. The French was indecipherable to me, but she pointed out the address.
Albert Moreau
Estaires, France
“Is this your uncle? Albert Moreau? Living in Estaires?”
Celeste nodded.
I checked my watch, pulled out my map, and found Estaires. Damn. That’s not too far from where I was headed. I’d have time to get them to their uncle and still get to Luther by morning. Bloody hell. Looked like I was going to be St. Nick for the night.
“Okay girls, it looks like we’re making a stop at the North Pole.”
The Moreau sisters looked at each other and then swarmed around me, hugging me around the waist and hanging on me as if I were their long-lost uncle.
Or Pére Noël.